A Spiritual Awakening: A Reflection On Spiritual Films

A Spiritual Awakening: A Reflection On Spiritual Films

“What I thought was unreal, now for me... seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real... which seems now more to be unreal.” What the Bleep Do We Know, Fred Alan Wolf, Theoretical Physicist

Spirituality is often approached either as a dogma with an emphasis on scripture and sacred texts, or as ritual with an emphasis on the legal norms. Certainly, many of the studies on religion have approached it from one of these angles. However, focusing solely on sacred texts and rituals can limit our understanding of the experiences and engagements of believers with religion. At the present, with breakthroughs in science and advancements in the study of quantum physics, spirituality rises once again to shine upon humanity’s quest for knowing the meaning of reality, of its nature and that of the universe that it belongs to. Forms of spirituality and mysticism can vary in their manifestations from culture to the other, but all are essentially springing up from the same eternal spring. They can be cinematographic and present in expressions and visions densely rich and that has a lot in common with the arts of cinema. Through discussing various themes and scenes from five films; Baraka, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring Again, What the Bleep Do We Know, The Secret and Al Mureed, this essay will illuminate how the spiritual manifestations in each film were mirroring the same reflection of a universal truth throughout the world heritage, in relation to the findings of quantum physics as shown in the film What the Bleep Do We Know.

Film is quite simply an astonishing medium in transmitting the illumination of spirituality and divinity. It can teach us about the spi...

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...paths can reflect this reality, and their differences are mere manifestations depending on the clarity of the medium.

Conclusively, through the lenses of quantum physics, the spiritual depictions in the discussed films speak volumes of how materialism that says that all of reality can be reduced to matter and its interactions, contradicts the findings of quantum sciences and experiences. Since our minds and thoughts perceptibly do affect the physical world, it would follow that they are themselves part of the lived reality. Therefore, the validity of spiritual experiences illustrated in these works or arts is evident and the evidence is increasing by the day. These all are a call as Rumi has said once, “when setting out on a journey do not seek advice from someone who never left home, keep on knocking

'til the joy inside opens a window, look to see who's there”.